Happy birthday, Jack Kirby!

On August 28, 1917, Jacob Kurtzberg was born in the shadows of poverty in New York City where the slum tenements were so close that days would often pass before he felt the light of the sun on his face. As Jack Kirby, he rose to fame as the greatest comic book artist and the major creator of the Marvel Universe.

Today is Jack "King" Kirby's birthday. If you never heard of him, Google him... in a nice way, I mean. Without Jack Kirby, there's no Marvel Universe, no movies with Spider-Man, Avengers, Hulk, Thor, Captain America, X-Men. The Star Wars movies may not have ever been, and certainly not with the story lines and characters they used, since Lucas and Spielberg were heavily influenced by the earlier New Gods comics done by Kirby.

Jack created or co-created more multi-million dollar properties than any man in the history of the world, yet he's virtually unknown by the public who think Stan Lee created all those Marvel characters by his little old lonesome self. Lee didn't. Jack was a very kind man with a prodigious imagination that touched the world. Happy birthday, Jack!

Here's a short article I wrote about Jack many years ago: https://books.google.com/books?id=KI-et-e206EC&pg=PA193&lpg=PA193&dq=jack+kirby+jim+amash&source=bl&ots=9vcEeYID8r&sig=WDQ1qlC-hJtD4j8bxo8kCgXGH-s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDkQ6AEwCGoVChMIjpHhxvzMxwIVBB0-Ch141QEr#v=onepage&q=jack%20kirby%20jim%20amash&f=false